After reading much of what is written here, I see communication as the only problem. The professional side did their best to explain too technical things to the not-so-professionals. They could have just shrugged and walked away or say it is total rubbish but they didn't, so at the least this shows their professionalism and their good intentions.
Now, what people fear is mostly the things they do not know basically. That fear still stays with you though, even you know what's going on and you have gone over it lots of times. It should be there to make you cautious; maybe a pilot's fears are different than a passanger's but all in the end it comes down to a safe operation anyway. So I wouldn't agree with the term that has been used for pilots here, no I don't think they are gung-ho cowboys...
Thinking about driving a car and flying a plane, I don't see much difference at all; you should always practice extreme caution and the slightest mistake can cost lives. However aircrafts are much more complicated pieces of machinery and one expects this as they use 3 dimensions in space rather than 2 dimensions in the case of ground vehicles.
I will try to simplify the case by giving this example (let me know if I get anything wrong please):
Say you have a car (for the sake of discussion and comparison to a 4-engine aircraft) with an engine that has 4 cylinders. Now you will have 4 spark plugs. Let's say one developed a problem and won't fire, meaning now you have only 3 cylinders out of 4, working OK. Does that mean that the car won't go or climb any hills? Of course not, it just means you have up to 25% less power, more fuel consumption... Will you be able to pin-point the problem right away? Most probably not so you will take it to a mechanic.
Now consider a 4 engine aircraft which losses one of the engines. Will the plane drop out of the sky? If there are no other problems that is simply not possible. Will you know the problem right away? Yes because you have an access to monitoring every essential part of an airplane. Do you have the luxury to talk to maintenance right away? Oh yes and it is such a nice thing (wish we had the same things for cars too)...
The obvious part, to me, is how good can you monitor a thing let it be any piece of machinery. If you have a good monitoring of what's going on most probably you will be able to take the necessary steps to prevent an unfortunate event.
Lastly I would like to say the safe flight of an aircraft is accomplished by a team of people. If there is something wrong at any place the whole thing can go down; so it is not always who is behind the "wheel".